Paunchy Yasir Shah's Candy Crush moment in Manchester
Younis Khan is not taking notes. It is the 46th over of the innings, Pakistan are 158-8, and the lower-order clownery is on show. The middle order has crumbled, and a gaping cavity exposed. Yet, Younis Khan is not taking notes.
Perhaps the sun that so gloriously does not beat down on Manchester has risen in the west or England's weather hasn't been a bitch. But instead of taking notes, Younis Khan is watching the game.
It is the fourth morning of the first Test, and England need quick wickets. Every run is a thorn on their backside, and their nerves swell. A breezy 30 at this point is exactly what they don't need. England know that as well as Pakistan.
But as it so often happens in this unstably wonderful game that switches sides oftener than a cheating spouse, it is three slices of meat that stand between England and the game.
Yasir Shah's rare heroics with the bat
Yasir Shah is a portly legspinner. You look at him, and you see a middle-age mutton-gut oaf who should have retired ten years ago and should be sitting home tweeting about Netflix.
Even if you made a list of the wackiest batsmen in cricket, he wouldn't qualify because he isn't a batsman. Does he have a Test century in Australia? - that doesn't count. It came at a time when it couldn't have mattered less with the bowlers feeding him patronage.
Yasir Shah looks like a bearded dragon and walks like Uncle Bob. He runs like an asthmatic patient and leaps like David Warner Lite. But google Yasir Shah's name, and you'll find a feed at least half full of his batting shots or of David Warner cheering behind as he leaps to the skies to celebrate a hundred. If ever smartphones were allowed inside dressing rooms, imagine Yasir Shah googling his name like a psycho narc before going out to bat.
But the crazy thing about Yasir Shah is, he isn't Yin or Yang. He is both.
If you get sustained brilliance from greats, expect no such thing from Yasir Shah. His is a chance event, one that is so eerily dependent on the vagaries of the moment.
Yasir Shah's Lord's ten-fer that wheedled mermaids out of oceans and giants out of hills was followed by a gallant 1-266 that included a nine-over spell which went for 53. In the same year in Manchester, he lumbered to 3/236.
In the last Test, Yasir Shah prized out a five-fer but after a first innings 0-60. Those are figures you can either love him for or never talk to again.
Come Australia, you wonder if Yasir Shah's hand-made seven is an indication of his grand total of series wickets. But that's an even leaner four. He thought he made up for it with a ton with the bat, as his somnambulating leap suggested, but he did not. It came at an inconsequential stage, and Yasir Shah's batting is still muck.
Fast forward to Manchester, Yasir Shah doesn't pause for a minute to feel the gravel under his feet or the sun shimmering through the clouds. Such subtleties are past him. Buoyed by a four-fer and the devil-may-care lease that presents itself when you're batting with an Abbas, Yasir Shah took it upon himself to bat England out of the game, like he so often does. In the end he might not have done exactly that but at that moment, it certainly felt like he did.
Were there nerves? Odds standing across him and sticking out their tongues? There can't be for Yasir Shah. Or even if there are, they don't matter. Yasir Shah is fat - not the burly fat, but the 'fat' fat, but he enjoys his cricket more than a six-pack dunce enjoys sex.
Yasir Shah smiles after every play-and-a-miss more than a pedo does at a bird. Notwithstanding the sneers, he'll still keep smiling, because on the day, there could have been no greater gift than enjoying the moment.
And so, with Jofra Archer, reputationally one of the fastest bowlers in the world, and Stuart Broad, incidentally bowling faster than the former running in from either end, there could have been no half-measures. Factually or figuratively.
Yasir Shah prods his bat, sets his stance, and takes strike against the pacers. It's only that long, really.
His assault lasted for twenty minutes. But in the grand scheme of things, it could've meant everything. And then he brought out the tricks with the ball, as if a first-innings four-fer was not enough.
With England at 117-5 before Woakes and Buttler arrived, it looked like those extra 20 runs meant more than anyone could've thought. And besides, they had everything you could have hoped from a tailender blitz - hogging the strike, swings-and-misses, the slogs over midwicket, and the mishits to mid-off. Some would say a Kohli stare would've been less scathing.
Of course, there was that final act in which Yasir Shah must've torn the seam apart. Once, he nearly hit Woakes on the head. He bowls with the new ball and the old, and takes wickets with both.
When Broad tried to sweep him off the rough, Yasir Shah went over the wicket and bowled into the pads. Those are the scenes that we shall remember. But for the scorn and mocks he received six months back, when he went two Test matches in a row with four wickets and his paunch more visible than the leer, the sheer unlikeliness of Yasir Shah's knock in Manchester brought the rooftop down.
For the record, it made England's WinViz nosedive from 40% to 28%.
Yasir Shah may be on the wrong side of this game. But in a Test match that will be remembered for England, Woakes, and Buttler giving himself a longer rope, the legspinner gave it its tiny red cherry and the endless oohs and aahs of the moment.
And for that, there could not have been a better prize than Younis Khan watching the match without eating his notebook.
Yasir, baby, apna time aayega, bro.